Hacker News Reader

> The drug is based on a molecule he discovered while working at Pfizer.

Is Pharma different than Engineering in terms of IP?

If my former employer has evidence that what I am working on in a new gig was discovered while on company time using company resources couldn't they sue?

View on HN

Doesn’t the article touch on this:

> On leaving the company, he acquired the intellectual property [IP] rights from his former employer…

It says he used the money from redundancy to continue with his work. Pfizer would have a hard time winning that case because the discovery was made past their employment. Having field knowledge doesn't make it a crime. Coding is different because it's easier to copy paste functions & classes, it also doesn't help that everything has timestamps. Your best bet is to rewrite everything.

Maybe it's semantics, but I understand it was discovered while at Pfizer and further developed post-redundancy. IANAL but it definitely feels like a grey area?

It's not a grey area at all. The article literally says that he purchased the IP rights from Pfizer, and as part of the deal they got a small stake in his new company.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com